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Japanese scientists have succeeded in transmitting energy wirelessly, in a key step that could one day make solar power generation in space a possibility, an official said Thursday.
Researchers used microwaves to deliver 1.8 kilowatts of power—enough to run an electric kettle—through the air with pinpoint accuracy to a receiver 55 metres (170 feet) away.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has measured a curious abundance of methane spewing into the atmosphere of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. A team of American and French scientists published findings in Geophysical Research Letters suggesting two scenarios that could explain the methane abundance observed in the plumes.
Oceans trapped under ice appear to be pretty common in the solar system and one of them, on a small moon of Saturn’s, appears to be quite hot. Scientists reported evidence for hydrothermal vents on the Saturnian moon Enceladus, with temperatures of its rocky core surpassing 194 degrees Fahrenheit (90 degrees Celsius) in spots. The discovery, if confirmed, would make Enceladus the only place other than Earth where such chemical reactions between rock and heated water are known to be occurring today — and for many scientists, it would make Enceladus a most promising place to look for life.
Any place with liquid water is a candidate for microbial extraterrestrial life. Mars, Titan, Europa, Ceres, Enceladus, and Ganymede have the presence of water ice and speculation that life may exists there. There are now six candidate locations for liquid water in solar system other than Earth.
The Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, another team reported signs of another under-ice ocean, on Ganymede, the largest of Jupiter’s moons. Scientists are already convinced that there is a large ocean, also covered by ice, on another Jovian moon, Europa. NASA’s Galileo spacecraft had also found hints of hidden water on Ganymede and on another of Jupiter’s moons, Callisto.
Journal of Geophysical Review - The search for a subsurface ocean in Ganymede with Hubble Space Telescope observations of its auroral ovals
Europa is estimated to have twice the amount of water as Earth.
Scientists have long suspected that there was an ocean of liquid water on Ganymede — the largest moon in the solar system, at about 3,273 miles (5,268 kilometers) across — has an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface. The Galileo probe measured Ganymede's magnetic field in 2002, providing some data supporting the theory that the moon has an ocean. It is estimated that Ganymede has more water than Earth.
Liquid water moons of gas giants and in asteroid belts could be common outside our solar system as well. The most common of the thousands of exoplanets that have been identified are gas giants.
Enceladus could have a 10 kilometer thick liquid water Ocean under 30-40 kilometers of ice.
Enceladus
Water appears to make up about 40 percent of Ceres' volume.
Saturn's moon Titan
Europa
Water on Mars exists today almost exclusively as ice, with a small amount present in the atmosphere as vapour. The only place where water ice is visible at the surface is at the north polar ice cap.[2] Abundant water ice is also present beneath the permanent carbon dioxide ice cap at the Martian south pole and in the shallow subsurface at more temperate latitudes. More than five million cubic kilometers of ice have been identified at or near the surface of modern Mars, enough to cover the whole planet to a depth of 35 meters. Even more ice is likely to be locked away in the deep subsurface.
Some liquid water may occur transiently on the Martian surface today but only under certain conditions.
Abstract - on Ganymede water
We present a new approach to search for a subsurface ocean within Ganymede through observations and modeling of the dynamics of its auroral ovals. The locations of the auroral ovals oscillate due to Jupiter's time-varying magnetospheric field seen in the rest frame of Ganymede. If an electrically conductive ocean is present, the external time-varying magnetic field is reduced due to induction within the ocean and the oscillation amplitude of the ovals decreases. Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations show that the locations of the ovals oscillate on average by 2.0° ±1.3°. Our model calculations predict a significantly stronger oscillation by 5.8° ± 1.3° without ocean compared to 2.2°±1.3° if an ocean is present. Because the ocean and the no-ocean hypotheses cannot be separated by simple visual inspection of individual HST images, we apply a statistical analysis including a Monte Carlo test to also address the uncertainty caused by the patchiness of observed emissions. The observations require a minimum electrical conductivity of 0.09 S/m for an ocean assumed to be located between 150 km and 250 km depth or alternatively a maximum depth of the top of the ocean at 330 km. Our analysis implies that Ganymede's dynamo possesses an outstandingly low quadrupole-to-dipole moment ratio. The new technique applied here is suited to probe the interior of other planetary bodies by monitoring their auroral response to time-varying magnetic fields.
Lockheed Martin has provided a glimpse at the next generation of commercial spacecraft by revealing its proposal for NASA's Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS-2) program. The new cargo ships, which Lockheed compares to the US transcontinental railroads of the 19th century, are designed to not only resupply the International Space Station, but also support manned deep space missions, such as the first expedition to Mars.
Where there is water, there is life, much more when it’s warm. The discovery of an ocean underneath Enceladus may just be the shot in the arm that NASA needs to keep looking for more habitable places in the solar system. Maybe we don’t need to explore outside of our own domain after all. The news is welcomed with great anticipation by planet Earth.
Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn, discovered to have warm water enough for life. In 2004, Cassini, the biggest spacecraft to date by NASA , arrived in the orbit around Saturn. Since then, it’s sent back oodles of information about the planet and some of its attendant moons. As we all know, life doesn’t exist without the great significance of the components in all living matters; water, involving the elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur, source of heat, and enough time for life to develop. All this conditions exist on earth but scientists believe it may exist on other objects too. Through the e research, it was now confirmed that Saturn’s moon Enceladus, concealed with its thermal activity on its ocean floor which could make the conditions right for life.
There are only five bodies in our solar system that are known to bear rings. The most obvious is the planet Saturn; to a lesser extent, rings of gas and dust also encircle Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. The fifth member of this haloed group is Chariklo, one of a class of minor planets called centaurs: small, rocky bodies that possess qualities of both asteroids and comets.
Scientists only recently detected Chariklo's ring system—a surprising finding, as it had been thought that centaurs are relatively dormant. Now scientists at MIT and elsewhere have detected a possible ring system around a second centaur, Chiron.
Two new maps of Mercury taken by a NASA probe have identified never-before-seen formations on the planet's surface.
The previously unidentified regions of Mercury have compositions that differ significantly from the crust around them. Known as geochemical terranes, these zones provide insight into the formation of the outer skin of the planet. The maps appear in two new studies, which suggest that the most recently identified features may have formed not from the planet's crust but from just below it, in the mantle.
Created using the X-Ray Spectrometer (XRS) and Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (GRS) instruments on NASA's MESSENGER probe, the maps are used to study the surface chemistry of Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. This analysis will provide information about the concentrations of elements like potassium, uranium and sodium on Mercury's surface. The experiment will also provide scientists with ratios of silicon to other elements on the planet's surface.
(Reuters) - Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, is rapidly increasing production of the engines that power its Falcon 9 rocket and expects to meet its target of 13 launches and two test flights this year, President Gwynne Shotwell told Reuters.
SpaceX, the technology upstart founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk, is stepping up hiring of engineers and other workers to help boost production, including many from other sectors such as the automotive industry and the military, company officials said.
This year, the company expects to produce at least 180 engines, with that number set to increase to 240 next year, and 400 in 2017, Shotwell told Reuters in an interview late last week.
The pictures were taken by Nasa's Mercury Messenger spacecraft, which has been orbiting just tens of kilometres from the planet's surface.
This has allowed it to gather high-resolution data before the probe crashes into Mercury.
This will end its four-year mission around the first planet from the Sun.
You could be forgiven for wondering how a planet where temperatures soar above 400C could host water-ice.
But some impact craters at the north pole of this scorching world are always shadowed from the Sun, turning them into cold traps.
Best views yet of Mercury's ice-filled craters
17 March 2015
Scientists have obtained the most detailed views yet of ice deposits inside the permanently shadowed craters at Mercury's north pole.
The pictures were taken by Nasa's Mercury Messenger spacecraft, which has been orbiting just tens of kilometres from the planet's surface.
This has allowed it to gather high-resolution data before the probe crashes into Mercury.
This will end its four-year mission around the first planet from the Sun.
You could be forgiven for wondering how a planet where temperatures soar above 400C could host water-ice.
But some impact craters at the north pole of this scorching world are always shadowed from the Sun, turning them into cold traps.
http://m.bbc.co.uk/n...onment-31917308
Most missions to the International Space Station range from 160 to 180 days, but this month Russia and NASA will launch a joint year-long mission designed to more fully test the stress of space travel on the human body. ISS veterans Scott Kelly (US) and Mikhail Kornienko (Russia) have been training for two years for this daunting mission, culminating in departure slated for March 27, 2015, 3:42 p.m. EST. from the historic Baikonur Cosmodrome.
A Nasa spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet has detected a mysterious aurora that reaches deep into the Martian atmosphere.
The Maven mission observed these "Christmas lights" for five days leading up to 25 December last year.
Scientists have also discovered a dust cloud at high altitude, which does not match predictions.
The preliminary results were presented at the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in Texas.
The mission was designed to help solve the mystery of how the Red Planet lost most of its atmosphere and much of its water and other volatiles.
"The question is how much water has been lost into the crust, how much has been lost to space. How much CO2 has been lost to the crust, how much to space," said Maven's chief scientist Prof Bruce Jakosky from the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Ultraviolet aurora on Mars
The bright ultraviolet auroral glow seen by Maven in December spanned Mars' northern hemisphere.
China is reportingnew progress in shaking out procedures required for rocketing back to Earth samples from the moon.
The service module from China's experimental round-trip moon moon mission last year was used to test maneuvers in lunar orbit, including braking into a suitable position for orbital docking. The country's State Administration of Science, Technology
These practice steps mimic maneuvers to be used in the future Chang'e 5 sample-return moon mission being eyed for 2017.
